Replacement
by Let'sHopeNot
Summary: XJ-9 discovers the inspiration for her creation, and wonders who the real Jennifer was...
1. Chapter 1

"Mom?"

"Yes hon?"

"Am I a replacement?"

Nora Wakeman stared at her daughter who had entered the room seconds earlier.

"Wh-what are you talking about darling?" Nora asked nervously. XJ-9 glanced down, her eyes hardened in a way that robot eyes shouldn't.

"Am I a replacement…for your real daughter?" As XJ-9's voice lowered at the statement, Mrs. Wakeman's eyes widened and her brain entered a state of panic.

"XJ-9! H-How did you know about this?!" Mrs. Wakeman shrilled

"She isn't hidden very well, I just had to find a box I couldn't scan through and…well I had to manually open it and…"

"And you found the newspaper clippings."

Nora cursed her sentimentality, she racked her enlarged brain to remember why she kept those clippings in the first place, certainly not for this. She couldn't help but resign her thinking as her daughter began to recite the clipping found, in that blasted box.

"Jennifer Wakeman died at the age of 16, in a car accident. A pair of vandals ran over her in a getaway attempt. Though this is a tragic loss for the entire community, her poor mother seems to have taken it worse, as she has locked herself away in her home, it has been rumored she quit her job with the Skyway Patrol, and isn't expected to be seen any time soon."

XJ-9 attempted to keep her voice monotone while reciting, but the façade was soon shattered as her voice shook with hurt, eventually the reading was finished with a broken end and a wavering voice.

"Th-that's what it said" she somehow spat out. Nora tried to calm her.

"Honey you must realize that…" and in this attempt all hell broke loose.

"Is that all I am to you!?" XJ-9 shouted, "Some perverted clone!? A remembrance of what once was? A shrine to the true JENNY!?" She gulped then continued her rant with a whisper. "…did you try to resurrect your daughter through me?" As her daughter's tirade continued Mrs. Wakeman's eyes widened and her stomach churned.

"Darling I-I…" Her heart seemed to pump out of her chest as she uttered the next statement, desperately hoping her daughter would accept her for what she was.

"Please sit down, it will take me a while to explain."

XJ-9 stared at her, hurt still brimming in her eyes, and knowing had she been graced with tear ducts, vain attempts of simulated tears would be streaming down her face right now. Despite many electrodes in her system demanding her to run out, and leave with the anger intact, her curiosity overruled, and she finally sat down allowing her mother to explain herself.

Nora started.

"When Jennifer died I was frantic, hysterical even. I was so horribly terribly sunken in despair that I would do anything to get her back… Anything. Thus with a grief-stricken mind, and the highest knowledge of robotics, I set out to rebuild my daughter. I spent 20 years building and building and building, and out of it came you."

As this tale continued, and XJ-9 believed her fears had been confirmed, her revulsion grew. "So is that all I am? The product of a horror-stricken mind? Steel and gears meant to replace flesh and blood? When I was being built, there was no 'me' no. Your true daughter was all you had on your mind."

"No XJ-9, luckily that is where you are wrong. Though Jennifer was my everything, and I bit and kicked the whole way through, I went through the mourning process like any other human. Amidst gears and scraps of metal a gaping hole in me was healed and the burning passion to bring her back was eventually snuffed out.

Despite this, I continued building, of course only on the final model, the one that made me forgive the cruel world, the one that made me want to protect it. That final model was you. However much I hate to admit it, all the XJs before you were made in the grips of madness, in an attempt to immortalize something gone forever. I'm afraid that I have but two daughters, you and Jennifer."


	2. Chapter 2

It seemed like a million conflicting feelings hit XJ-9 at once, her computerized brain counted each in varying clarity. Joy at discovering that she was not made to be Jennifer, sadness at the fact that her sisters were conceived in the way she dreaded to be, and the last emotion froze her. This realization hit her and seemed to snuff out any remnants of joy left from ending her mother's madness.

"No mother," XJ-9 said softly, "Even though I'm really really happy that I wasn't made to reawaken Jennifer I'm still not perfect…you don't have two daughters. You have one daughter twice over."

"What are you-"

"My AI mom, my artificial intelligence"

"No honey…"

"I read the notes, you scanned Jennifer's brain slowly, putting stages of her memory into each robot, you planned to combine them all and put them in your final robot."

Nora sighed and looked fairly calm despite the words to soon come out of her mouth. "Sweetie, that was for XJ-10."

"XJ-10!" her daughter exclaimed, "But there was no-"

"Exactly. XJ-10 would have been Jennifer. With the technology I had, I could've made her, but I was long since past that. XJ-9, you are my final project, my magnum opus… my daughter."

Mrs. Wakeman's hands sweated as she once again hoped that her daughter wouldn't judge her for the thing she attempted to do that fateful night.

"Darling, one night deep into your construction I-I was desperately sad… I thought of putting mind into you right then and there.

A wash of protectiveness stopped me. How could I put Jennifer's mind into another being's body? It would be an unbearable perversion of consciousness. Suddenly another wave of protectiveness equally as strong hit me. How could I put another mind into XJ-9's body? I couldn't do it.

Then I thought, what mind would I be replacing? She hasn't one of her own. From then I set out to find you your own artificial intelligence. In fact I spent your entire last year of construction searching for an AI, and you'll have to remember a bit to understand how I found it."


	3. Chapter 3

"Alright darling, do you remember the rumors of my quitting the Skyway Patrol, after Jennifer died?" XJ-9 nodded, her circuits calculating all the possible ways this could have anything to do with the matter at hand, though finding no concrete answer.

"Well those rumors were true, after Jennifer died I devoted my life to the study of robots. Luckily I always stayed involved. Now XJ-9 do you remember your experiences on Cluster Prime, the planet inhabited by androids?" Again XJ-9 nodded, still calculating.

Nora sighed, "Have you noticed how all those citizens having completely accurate AIs? Completely advanced new technology and functions? Almost eerily similar to the way your own AI functions?" XJ-9 gasped in horror.

"Mom! Are you telling me my brain is made of alien technology? VEXUS technology!?"

"No, no darling, although I will admit it was influenced by it. Here is how your brain came to pass, we actually encountered Vexus a few times during my years of service in the Skyway Patrol, and after I quit, (throughout which she became more and more violent, so it's a good thing you came along when you did).

Well her technology, though still more advanced than ours, had not fully matured yet, and at that point the Skyway Patrol could still defeat her using wits and strategy. After one particularly nasty defeat they sent an intelligence cruiser crashing down to Earth, and found a few blueprints on it, pertaining to the citizens there.

Out of courtesy to me and my years of service they allowed me to take a look at them. Luckily these blueprints were utterly useless to them military-wise and I was allowed to keep them, in fact they might still be near the telescope somewhere… hope Sheldon hasn't gotten a look at them. Regardless the technology they contained was stunning. Absolutely stunning.

They had advances in AI that we could only dream of, and after multiple modifications seeing as it was the basic model that all the androids there was based off of, and removing some useless golden chip limitation, I made you. Your personality came from my own head, and your artificial intelligence's amazing feats come from the Cluster's design.

Darling you have the most unique AI on both earth and Cluster Prime, and although I suppose I programmed you with the basic essentials, empathy and kindness and what-have-you, your AI formed it's personality itself, your brain can learn and adapt, better than any robot's maybe even better than any human's"

The impulses in XJ-9's circuits were pulsing into overdrive, acknowledging, that although her mother was her maker, she was really created by herself and her own experiences. Noting that her sister's would never have the same type of AI she did, and processing that she preferred to be based off of alien technology, compared to a 16-year old human. Amid the buzz of electrical activity, impulses running this way and that, one emotion rang clear. Happiness.

"Oh mom, you made me! I made me! I'm not based off of someone! I wasn't meant to replace!" XJ-9's mechanical arms stretched out to hug her mother, "I was made to be ME!" her voice rang out, overjoyed.

"Yes darling," Nora choked out, through her daughter's death grip, "You are your own person, your own robot, your own AI…and you will always be my daughter."


End file.
